In 1922, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann coined the term “manufacturing consent.” In Lippmann’s view, the best solutions to complex problems in a democracy could not be determined by the masses; rather, democracy should be managed by a “specialized class” and a “bureau of experts” that could best understand common interests and shape public opinion through the tools of propaganda. Edward Bernays, sometimes called “the father of public relations” expanded upon Lippmann’s thesis in his 1947 essay “The Engineering of Consent.” According to Bernays, the right to free speech and a free press is accompanied by a “right of persuasion,” which is facilitated by mass media.

Source: Collapse of the COVID Truth Regime – Tablet Magazine

The country has long run on the basis of technocratic expertise buried in the Administrative state agencies. These agencies make rules and regulations on their own, and also enforce them – without a vote of the people. They are generally required to solicit public opinion on proposed rules – but the Administrative Procedures Act does not require that they listen to the input, only solicit input. This leads to rule by technocracy.

For a century, only those with a printing press or broadcast license had the ability to engage in mass influence campaigns. Social media upended in this and became a friction-less platform for the spread of propaganda.

The traditional media did not like this competition and has gone overboard in proclaiming “misinformation” and “disinformation”, even though we can now look back over the past three years and see that mass media was the most powerful purveyor of misinformation. The simple explanation is – they don’t like competition.

Nor do governments. We know, from the Twitter Files, that the U.S. government itself directed Twitter to censor and suspend user accounts of Americans because it did not like their speech.

Today we remain firmly stuck on technocratic elite worship – and we are still instructed that questioning the official narrative is wrong.

I own both of these books and will hopefully have time to explore this topic in more detail, later.